Dial up your home interiors with these classic clock choices

We plan to be right on schedule for the new school year by clocking timepieces to suit every living space 

George Nelson & Associates Eye-clock, a modernist masterpiece, €380, under license to Vitra.

You know that moment. It’s a brisk September school morning, and you’re checking the time to the shaved minute. The rummage for phones is on. In many cases, our cult-like dependence on mobile technology, including simply telling the time, has stripped a traditional house clock out of the building.

The intricacy of movements (with the exception of something Swiss and expensive) doesn’t excite us as it did in the early days of horology. Still, the inclusion of clocks, bold old-school signals from the analogue age, provide beautiful, useful, highly personal inclusions. 

There is a fascinating variety to choose from, including 1970s flip varieties, station clocks and witty, arty dandies. Here a just a few of our favourite timekeepers to not just prompt your punctuality but to call time on a boring space.

George Nelson Night Clock, re-editions by Vitra; prices from €440.

In modern house clocks, we have to rewind over half a century to the brilliance of George Nelson. Following a scholarship in 1932 that took the 24-year-old Yale graduate to Rome, Nelson became completely immersed in the modernist movement sweeping the European design community. 

On his return to the States, he brought attention to the highly influential ideas in architecture and industrial design of luminaries including Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti and Mies van der Rohe.

Clocks became an obsession, and Nelson would go on to design 150 varieties through his own company George Nelson & Associates and Howard Miller. Now made under license by Vitra, there’s a good range of very classy Nelson re-editions from 1948-1960 with quartz movements for €275-€450.

My choice would be Nelson’s fascinating and lovely acrylic and glass Night Clock (4766 in the Nelson catalogue, c1948). Hand-made in Poland, it’s a gem-like ball that magnifies the dial, set on a brass stem, and is perfect to gaze over desks, nightstands, and shelves where it can behave as clock-general; €440, various suppliers.

For alternatives, look up Nelson’s Cones and Cradles, and his signature (wall hung) Eye-clock, a modernist masterpiece c.1957 for the wall made in Switzerland; from €380.

Karlsson cuckoo clock, €99, meadowsandbyrne.com

Next up are two clocks from Karlsson, a Dutch watch brand that manufactures a huge range of fun and good quality Nordic-style clocks in China, with an excellent price point.

Its graphics, case designs and innovative technology are legendary. If you’re looking for a good station style with a bit of contemporary tickle, this brand is your first stop.

Karlsson offers many gorgeous wooden tables, wall and alarm clocks but I’m vouching for a very modern offering in ABS plastic that resketches the typical shape of the cuckoo-clock, or wag-on-the-wall. A real family character, she sings a little ditty between 8am and 10pm, and can be set to your chosen volume.

I would recommend this clock in white, hung on a determinedly coloured wall, immersed in a gallery of photographs or paintings; €99, meadowsandbyrne.com.

Kuttersmycke, €50, ikea.ie.

Bewitched by whimsy — try a super-sized pocket watch from Ikea. The Kuttersmycke is just €50, but with its handsome period polish looks like €500.

Flip-Clock without case, Karlsson by BOX32 Design, from €113 with an alarm feature.

Flip-Clock is a collector favourite for 24-hour fans, and the very best come in a number of battery-fed designs for Karlsson by BOX32 Design. Electric flip-clock alarms are a familiar bit of engineering from the 1970s, almost completely annihilated by LED digital read-out. 

In Wall and Table varieties, the metal card revolutions are available without a case to show off its pleasing mechanical innards in various steel stand-and-card colour combinations. All the fun of the fair, it’s even made with a small stand. So wonderfully weird and industrious, I flipped and bought one. It’s priced from €113 with an alarm feature, suppliers include wayfair.ie and thelittlegreenbag.ie.

Aika by Ari Canerva for Covo, €213.

Pendulums have a mindful quality and looking at new clocks that swing their thing (just for fun), there’s another European timepiece still popular since its launch in 2010 for open plan spaces and nurseries. 

Aika is Finnish for “time”, and this 18.5cm wall clock by Italian designer Ari Canerva for Covo, has a striking airy but sufficiently architectural line to chime with me. In painted steel, you can choose from a large range of pop colours, and it could (in time) be refinished with a spray coat, €213.

Covo also takes on the grandfather clock in a similar minimalist re-imagining by Kanerva. The Tiuku is one piece of metal making up a small box on two extraordinarily long, splayed legs that lean it into and off any available wall. 

A long case-clock clipped of everything you would expect, Tiuku, €300.

It would be ideal for behind a sofa to use a blank corner, and an epic and stately wedding present. The best price is straight from the firm, €300, covo-shop.com (it’s a great brand — look around).

Stripping a clock back to its essentials has resulted in a range of clocks without the expected dial or numbers or graduations (second markings). You can use these to create a bespoke clock with applied materials to the wall, stencilling and free-hand painting. 

Bottcher & Kayser Birdie clock for Stelton, €54.95.

The Stelton Birdie is a little piece of wall art best left to itself. German design duo Bottcher & Kayser is known for poetic clocks that recede into something very understated. The Birdie is a little tick-tock shape that at most times resembles a small bird in flight. If you come from another time zone or long to be there, set up two Birdies set to those times; €54.95, stelton.com.

The Moment wall clock in white appears as two black hands emerging softly from a white mist (it’s a clever use of a diffusing panel of acrylic). Highly unusual, it’s €121, from gejst.com and other suppliers.

If the idea of a terrace of similar dials (stock exchange style) appeals to you, look into the Bankers Vejrstationer clock (weather station) from Danish architect and design demi-god Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971).

One of his last works to fit out his masterful Danmarks Nationalbank at the heart of Copenhagen, it’s part of a set of 12cm dials that include a wall clock, a barometer (air pressure), a hygrometer (humidity) and a thermometer. The convex crystal and aluminium case give the dials a floaty feel. 

Now produced by the Rosendahl Design Group, clocks start around €100, with the whole set to order from Scandinavian outlets including finnishdesignshop.com from €100-€135 apiece.

Tide clock by Dublin maker Current, €65.

Finally, if time and tide have you reaching for your togs, there’s an Irish company with come beautiful clocks aimed at sea swimmers. Each clock shows the height of the tide (based on the Atlantic coast) and they come in a gorgeous range of designs that is still expanding. 

Currently, this includes Forty Foot, Seapoint and Ripple, Vico Baths, Sandymount Strand, Portmarnock, Bull Wall, Dunmore East, Salthill/Blackrock and Belmullet. I’m sure as demand increases, we will see coastal scenes all over Ireland. 

Set at a new or full moon with a tide table, current clocks are designed to track the moon’s effect on the tide. You set the tide clocks to complete a full rotation every 12 hours, 25 minutes and 14 seconds — the average time it takes the tide to come in and out on semidiurnal coasts. It’s priced at €65, currentclock.ie.